That process is already going on, isn't it? I'm not sure how much "self-determination" is involved, though. More like determination by whoever has the most armed men in any given place at any given time. I think we may overrate the degree to which the populace will determine who wins. The various portions of the populace will most likely try to stay alive, and side with whoever they think is going to advance - or least damage - their interests. Generally that means siding with whoever they think is going to win.
I personally don't think changing our approach is going to make much difference. We're coming up against limits to our capacity, not limits to our approach. Afghans will govern as Afghans govern. We can't change that. If we aren't going to govern the place ourselves, we have to accept that it will be governed in the Afghan way. We can't force the GIRoA to govern as we think they should, and we can't force either the GIRoA or the Taliban to reconcile and cooperate.
We did have the option, once upon a time, of accepting that our capacity to shape Afghanistan is limited and selecting a similarly limited objective. We could have simply set out to convince everybody in the place that no matter who came to power, attacking us or sheltering those who do is a bad idea with adverse consequences drastically exceeding the benefits. We'd have had a quite reasonable chance of accomplishing that. Instead, we let the mission creep on to "installing democracy"... something that we will someday understand that we cannot do.
If we fail to achieve the objective of reshaping Afghan governance - and I suspect that we will fail - it will not be because we took the wrong approach or used the wrong tactics. It will be because we selected an objective that is out of proportion to our capacity and to the resources we're prepared to commit.
We dug ourselves into this hole when we decided to dictate how Afghanistan should be governed. It's a difficult hole to get out of. I don't think digging deeper - meaning further attempts to shape Afghan governance to suit our objectives - is going to help.
Bookmarks